


I kiss the ring you gave me (then I swing with all my might)

by sabinelagrande



Category: Sagas of Sundry: Dread (Web Series)
Genre: Disappearance, Domestic, F/F, Femslash February, Hopeful Ending, Mental Health Issues, Old Married Lesbians, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, present day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:34:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: In the end, inexplicably, most of them make it.
Relationships: Goatman & Darby Trellis, Raina Fuller/Darby Trellis
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	I kiss the ring you gave me (then I swing with all my might)

**Author's Note:**

> Oops I watched Dread again. And I couldn't stop thinking about these precious disasters making it through to the present day.

Darby turned out to be a runner.

That's not in any philosophical sense. She literally enjoys running. She assumed she couldn't, because she'd never been small, and runners were lithe things. Then one day she looked at the weights she was supposed to be lifting and could only think about how much she hated them. She looked outside, onto an autumn day where the air was crisp, and she just left. She never got small, and that wasn't the point. The point was that she could just do it, nothing but herself and her own two feet, nothing stopping her.

It's a thing now. People like to bring her any kind of weird shoe representation, from carvings to cheap Christmas ornaments, and she keeps them in her office. It pleases her, this display of freedom that maybe no one else would understand.

Raina manifestly does not understand the shoes, but she bought Darby a pair of ornamental beaded moccasins that sit in a spot of the highest honor.

\--

She and Raina have a house; it is not a large house, because this is a college town and prices are ridiculous. Darby mostly pays the mortgage and doesn't care at all. Raina does a lot of things that don't make much money but make her very happy, and Darby is completely uninterested in penalizing her for that. She has her students, some who stay for a few weeks, some who stay for much longer; she also takes illustration work, mostly for fantasy covers and roleplaying games.

Darby came across her crying one morning, in the tiny apartment where they lived when Darby went back to school. She was sobbing, her tears dripping onto a sketch pad.

Darby squatted down next to her, putting a hand gently on her back. "Baby," she said. "Honey, what's wrong?"

"I drew a dragon," Raina said. Darby had no idea what that meant, so she just waited, rubbing circles on her back. "I haven't drawn dragons since before the cabin."

"I think," Darby said carefully, "that you are entitled to draw every single fucking dragon you could possibly want."

Raina laughed, then sobbed harder, letting Darby hold her tightly. Darby couldn't bear the thought of letting her go.

According to the reviews that Raina makes Darby read and then cringes when she listens to the gist of, Raina's style is marked by how loving the detail is, every single scale so perfectly placed that the monsters she creates are better than real. Raina's had enough of the monsters she knows are real, and Darby wouldn't possibly force her to go back.

\--

It turns out psychiatry is not meant to deal with people who have dealt with hugely complicated and powerful mystic forces that aren't supposed to exist. Somehow, it was Kayden's idea to get around it.

"You have to fuckin' lie," he said, poking the campfire.

Darby sighed. "You can't lie to a psychiatrist," she said. "They always know."

"No," he said. "They know you went through some shit. They think _you're_ lying because the content of the shit doesn't make sense to them."

"Then what am I supposed to say?" she said, frowning.

"My friend Tanner died in a cave-in, and I think it was my fault," he said, completely without emotion. "I developed an obsession with a man I didn't know and I thought I could contact him using magic. My friends and I fought constantly because we couldn't trust each other. I was stalked by a madman, and I couldn't feel safe afterwards."

"None of that is a lie," she said.

"That doesn't make it true," he said. "If you want somebody to give you some fuckin' drugs or shock treatment or whatever, speak their language."

He hadn't been wrong. He probably saved her life. What mattered wasn't that she had an encounter with an ancient being and searched for him obsessively; what mattered was that it exacerbated the OCD she probably would have had anyway. What mattered wasn't the paranoia that the whole thing engendered; what mattered was that she couldn't make it calm back down again, even when she knew in her heart that she was safe, that she was right, that there was nothing left to fear.

It turned out doctors were great if you could convince them you were human.

\--

"Oh, look!" Raina says. She's standing at the kitchen counter, opening the mail. "Sat sent us her new headshot!"

Darby looks at the picture, which is a glossy 8x10. In it, Sat is in character: Satine, Midnight Maven, the one she's been playing since her twenties. Black Mountain saved her; after all of it, she went to rehab. She pretended to be normal long enough to convince a friend to get her a gig doing midnight movies on public access, then it exploded. She still looks untouchably gorgeous, a punk rock vampire, grungy and flawless all at once, and she genuinely seems to love the convention circuit. She sends photos every time she updates, always signed in silver pen- "Love you guys _forever_ , Sat".

Every time, Raina carefully removes the old headshot and replaces it with the new one, in the frame that sits in their living room. When Darby sees it, it's like she can breathe, the proof that Sat is okay.

Next to the picture frame, there's an old, cheap flask. "Something to remember me by," Kayden said, holding Darby's hand and slapping it into her palm. He was grinning, wide-eyed, in that way he had that wasn't happy at all. He'd wanted to come when she went on her yearly pilgrimage to commune with the Goatman, and she regretted it. She regrets it now, still able to see him picking up his pack and walking over the rise, reaching back to flip her off, laughing mirthlessly.

She can't move the flask any more than she can move the photo. They have to be there, just as the arrowhead on the other side of the frame has to be. They found it that day, though not in the cavern; Tanner left nothing behind but his camera. Raina flatly refused to preserve the camera, so it is long since gone. She was right, of course: Tanner would have hated for his camera to sit on a shelf, memorializing him instead of being useful. Raina used it to take reference shots for paintings and sketches, though, by her own admission, she never learned to use it well.

That was never the point. Darby learned a long time ago that the world is just a canvas to be painted on, things inscribed upon it. It is in itself just an interesting collection of rocks, but the spirit, the essence, soaks in. That's all that matters.

\--

The Goatman doesn't live in Black Mountain anymore. He moved on, as creatures like him do.

Darby felt the calling; Raina had been pissed, but didn't try to stop her. She made it to his clearing in half the time it should have taken her, something she had no explanation for. It was empty, but it usually was. If he appeared, he always appeared from behind, with a breath of wind against her back.

She would normally need to invoke him, but for some reason, she knew she didn't. She just stood in the center of the clearing, her hands held out at her sides.

"I'm here," she said. "Do what you will."

He was behind her, the sound of snapping twigs under his feet, his scent filling her nostrils, curling around her. 

**Disciple,** he said. **You have been faithful. You have helped me. You have understood, when none of your kind would.**

"I've tried," she said. "I know that you're a protector. I know I have nothing to fear."

 **Then fear not,** he said. **It is time to leave this land. I charge you, Disciple.**

He laid one of his long hands on her chest, splayed fingers pressing into her breasts, her sternum. His touch was neither cold nor hot, just a pressure, like he was made out of force instead of matter.

 **You will take this inside of you,** he said, and she felt his hand pulse. **You will take this protection and this knowledge. You will be the one to bear my remembrance. You will be the survival.**

"Yes," she said, a feeling of complete calm washing over her. "I'll keep this for you."

 **You will,** he said, and then his touch was gone. **Heed my teachings, child. You will not see me again. Keep me with you, and you will have my power.**

"Always," Darby said, and she knew he was gone, but she knew that he wasn't.

Raina hadn't been thrilled when she came home with fingerprint-shaped mark on her sternum. It never went away, but Darby also never went back to Black Mountain, which Raina was overjoyed about.

\--

Raina is so gorgeous that sometimes Darby just sits around and looks at her.

Raina doesn't know Darby does this, because she couldn't fathom the idea that she would be worth that kind of consideration. Maybe Darby is admiring a vase, or the way a shaft of light looks against the wall, or contemplating if they need new tile in the kitchen.

Raina does think they need new tile in the kitchen and is wondering how to bring it up.

But Darby is uninterested in any of that; she's just looking at Raina. Raina went gray early, and her hair hangs to her waist, silvery and smooth. Sometimes she dyes streaks into it, mostly shades of red, but Darby likes it best when it's just plain. She's still petite, quick with her hands, and her eyes light up when she gets excited. It's been over thirty years since they got married, and Darby wants to sigh every time, a gift she's been given that she almost let slip from her hands.

They do replace the tile. Darby mostly wants green, but capitulates immediately when Raina says she's going to hand paint the backsplash and really needs it to be blue. She'll make that trade easily.

\--

Darby puts a hand on her chest when Raina can't see, her index finger fitting into the mark on her breastbone. It feels heady, baffling when she thinks about it all. There were five, there are four. Black Mountain chose Kayden; Death chose Tanner; Sat chose herself. The Goatman chose Darby, and she chose Raina, who wanted more than anything never to choose.

Darby carries all of his in her heart, marked on her soul. But she carries it light, a burden easy enough to run with. It is forever there, but they are fused now, no telling one from the other.

"Back soon," she says, tying her shoes, and Raina kisses her cheek as she leaves.


End file.
